About

Will Davis was born and grew up in Pensacola, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. He began his collegiate art education at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi in 1988. However, after his first year of studies, he was offered the opportunity to pursue a modeling career in Europe, an opportunity which quickly developed into a successful career path that had him living, working and traveling all over the world.

That path eventually led him to New York in 1991, where he continued modeling for the next several years.

In 1999, he began to look for opportunities within the field of art, eventually finding them in the animation industry, at the MTV Animation studio in New York as a layout artist for season 5 of the animated television series Daria in 2000. In 2001, he worked for Curious Pictures Studios in New York on the Mo Willems created Cartoon Network series Sheep In The Big City as a storyboard artist.

Will moved to Los Angeles in 2002, working as a freelance storyboard and conceptual artist for commercial, film, and television. Among his clients were Fox, Dreamworks, ABC, CBS, Disney, Seven Up, Burger King, State Farm, and many others.

Will’s first breaks in book illustration began in 2003 when he illustrated a book cover for Alex Shearer’s Sea Legs, published by Simon & Schuster. Soon after followed the covers and chapter illustrations for the Clemency Pogue Series, written by J.T. Petty and published by Simon & Schuster.

It was around that time First Second books was created, a graphic novel imprint of Macmillan Publishing. Will offered a submission to the house entitled Dawn Land, a graphic novel adaptation of a 1993 novel by Native American author Joseph Bruchac. Dawn Land the graphic novel was published by First Second in October of 2010.

Will moved to his Milton, Florida studio in 2004, not too far from where he grew up along the Emerald Coast, and that is where he currently lives and works today.